Correction to: Synthetic Biology and the Translational Imperative

Science and Engineering Ethics - The author group of above-mentioned review paper was incorrectly published in the online article.     

The Conception of Life in Synthetic Biology

The phrase ??synthetic biology?? is used to describe a set of different scientific and technological disciplines, which share the objective to design and produce new life forms. This essay addresses the following questions: What conception of life stands behind this ambitious objective? In what relation does this conception of life stand to that of traditional biology and biotechnology? And, could such a conception of life raise ethical concerns? Three different observations that provide useful indications for the conception of life in synthetic biology will be discussed in detail: 1. Synthetic biologists focus on different features of living organisms in order to design new life forms, 2. Synthetic biologists want to contribute to the understanding of life, and 3. Synthetic biologists want to modify life through a rational design, which implies the notions of utilising, minimising/optimising, varying and overcoming life. These observations indicate a tight connection between science and technology, a focus on selected aspects of life, a production-oriented approach to life, and a design-oriented understanding of life. It will be argued that through this conception of life synthetic biologists present life in a different light. This conception of life will be illustrated by the metaphor of a toolbox. According to the notion of life as a toolbox, the different features of living organisms are perceived as various rationally designed instruments that can be used for the production of the living organism itself or secondary products made by the organism. According to certain ethical positions this conception of life might raise ethical concerns related to the status of the organism, the motives of the scientists and the role of technology in our society.     

Beyond Patchwork Precaution in the Dual-Use Governance of Synthetic Biology

The emergence of synthetic biology holds the potential of a major breakthrough in the life sciences by transforming biology into a predictive science. The dual-use characteristics of similar breakthroughs during the twentieth century have led to the application of benignly intended research in e.g. virology, bacteriology and aerobiology in offensive biological weapons programmes. Against this background the article raises the question whether the precautionary governance of synthetic biology can aid in preventing this techno-science witnessing the same fate? In order to address this question, this paper proceeds in four steps: it firstly introduces the emerging techno-science of synthetic biology and presents some of its potential beneficial applications. It secondly analyses contributions to the bioethical discourse on synthetic biology as well as precautionary reasoning and its application to life science research in general and synthetic biology more specifically. The paper then identifies manifestations of a moderate precautionary principle in the emerging synthetic biology dual-use governance discourse. Using a dual-use governance matrix as heuristic device to analyse some of the proposed measures, it concludes that the identified measures can best be described as “patchwork precaution” and that a more systematic approach to construct a web of dual-use precaution for synthetic biology is needed in order to guard more effectively against the field’s future misuse for harmful applications.     

Synthetic Biology: From Having Fun to Jumping the Gun

Synthetic biology (SynBio) aims at making life easier to an engineer by applying biotechnology engineering principles such as standardization and modularity. I argue that living organisms are inherently non-machine, non-standardized entities and that the current state-of-the-art in SynBio combines pre- and post-standardization efforts, in a scenario without evidence that full standardization in biology is even possible. I finally propose a new view on SynBio based on purpose rather than on technicalities.     

合成生物学治理的国外经验综述及启示

鉴于合成生物学发展的不确定性及其对人类社会带来的制度、伦理等方面的挑战,提出有效的治理框架至关重要。虽然各国在合成生物学研究领域的地位和预期可能对治理共识的形成造成巨大影响,但通过多主体协作治理,不断推进监管制度改革来应对包括合成生物学等新兴技术的发展问题,即适应性治理,已是国际共识。公共管理的TAPIC框架有助于对合成生物学等新兴领域治理的理解。分析结果表明,各国不同的治理制度、科技发展水平和愿景对其治理影响深刻,必须加强问责制,参与性和完整性因素,以提高各国对新兴技术发展的治理水平。     

合成生物学伦理问题研究态势分析

合成生物学以创造新型生物为目标,这一领域的飞速发展在给人类带来巨大福祉的同时,也陆续引发众多伦理问题。利用VOSviewer等科学计量工具对国内外合成生物学伦理领域2000年~2019年近20年的相关研究文献进行量化分析,通过对时间分布、地域分布、关键词共现、研究方向等数据的系统分析,进一步对国内外学者、专家的应用研究成果与伦理思考进行总结概括,并对合成生物学伦理问题的研究趋势提出展望,以图廓清国内外合成生物学伦理问题研究的发展态势。     

Person Skilled in the Art in Synthetic Biology from Iraqi and Malaysian Perspectives

This article presents the problem of a person skilled in the field of synthetic biology. The person skilled in the art is one of the notions which have to be revisited due to the multidisciplinary nature of synthetic biology which involves numerous fields. The article studies this problem from the perspectives of Iraqi and Malaysian patent laws. First, it conceptualizes synthetic biology and person skilled in the art. The Iraqi and Malaysian attitudes regarding person skilled in the art are then addressed. Afterwards, the paper points out the multidisciplinary nature of synthetic biology. In its last part, it discusses the person skilled in synthetic biology and how patent offices and courts deal with this point. Finally, the authors submit that the use of a team of skilled persons to substitute for a single technician would render the obviousness test a subjective assessment dependent on the inventor. The level of non-obviousness would differ in similar cases simply because of the number of inventors. Consequently, the suggestion of having a hypothetical team instead of one person is irrelevant because skills that are attributed to the skilled notional person are not real skills. Thus, replacing him is easy, but the replacement would be fruitless because the skills attributed to a person or a team will be similar.     

Eternal Recurrence and the Categorical Imperative

The question has been raised whether Nietzsche intends eternal recurrence to be like a categorical imperative. The obvious objection to understanding eternal recurrence as like a categorical imperative is that for a categorical imperative to make any sense, for moral obligation to make any sense, it must be possible for individuals to change themselves. And Nietzsche denies that individuals can change themselves. Magnus thinks the determinism “implicit in the doctine of the eternal recurrence of the same renders any imperative impotent…. How can one will what must happen in any case?” At the other end of the spectrum, those who do hold that eternal recurrence is like a categorical imperative, for their part, tend to ignore or deny the determinism involved in eternal recurrence. This article explores the extent to which it can be claimed that eternal recurrence is like a categorical imperative without downplaying Nietzsche's dterminism.     

From Validating to Verifying: Public Appeals in Synthetic Biology

Synthetic biology provides a vivid and richly entangled contemporary example of a science being made public. A science, however, can be made public in different ways. A public could validate, legitimate, de-legimate, object to, verify, confirm or dissent from science. Practically, scientists could publicise science—in the mass media—or they could make science public. The contrast between high-profile, media scientists such as J. Craig Venter, and community-based participatory mechanisms such as OpenWetWare allows us to see how these alternatives play out in practice. While it is easy to criticise and dismiss the public-relations oriented promotion of synthetic biology by figures such as Venter, how should we evaluate the open participatory mechanisms of a social media effort such as OpenWetWare? I suggest, drawing on the work of Isabelle Stengers and Michael Warner, that the case of synthetic biology is interesting because many synthetic biologists commit themselves to making it public, and making its public-ness part of how it is done. They place hope in publics to make the science viable. At the same time, however, the publics who are welcomed into OpenWetWare are largely confined to validating the coordination mechanisms on which the claim to public-ness rests. Whether publics can do more than validate synthetic biology, then, remains a question both for publics outside and inside this emerging scientific field. And whether the alternatives of validation or participation themselves adequately frame what is at stake in the emergence of fields such as synthetic biology remains debatable.     

The Construction of Imaginaries of the Public as a Threat to Synthetic Biology

Discipline &; Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution, by Peter Dear, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995, 290 pp., $24.00 pb; $60.00 hb

Mathematics, Science, and Postclassical Theory, edited by Barbara Herrnstein Smith and Arkady Plotnitsky, Durham: Duke University Press, 1997, 279 pp., $12.00 pb     

Imperative content and the painfulness of pain

Representationalist theories of phenomenal consciousness have problems in accounting for pain, for at least two reasons. First of all, the negative affective phenomenology of pain (its painfulness) does not seem to be representational at all. Secondly, pain experiences are not transparent to introspection in the way perceptions are. This is reflected, e.g. in the fact that we do not acknowledge pain hallucinations. In this paper, I defend that representationalism has the potential to overcome these objections. Defenders of representationalism have tried to analyse every kind of phenomenal character in terms of indicative contents. But there is another possibility: Affective phenomenology, in fact, depends on imperative representational content. This provides a satisfactory solution to the aforementioned difficulties.     

Biosecurity and Open-Source Biology: The Promise and Peril of Distributed Synthetic Biological Technologies

In this article, we raise ethical concerns about the potential misuse of open-source biology (OSB): biological research and development that progresses through an organisational model of radical openness, deskilling, and innovation. We compare this organisational structure to that of the open-source software model, and detail salient ethical implications of this model. We demonstrate that OSB, in virtue of its commitment to openness, may be resistant to governance attempts.     

The Survival Imperative

Science and Engineering Ethics - Humans are powerful and clever, and also more ignorant than they know. As a result, they too often fail to acknowledge or even recognize their limitations, and are...     

The Moral Imperative

Abstract

Given recent evidence concerning the prevalence of impairment in practitioners and its deleterious effects upon clients, therapist self-care must be viewed as a moral imperative. Despite the perception that self-care is especially problematic for women psychotherapists, research indicates that we are less ambivalent about practicing self-care and engaging in personal therapy than men practitioners (Mahoney, 1997). We propose a classification system based upon the dimensions of awareness of impairment and commitment to self-care and offer practical suggestions in order to create a climate more amenable for women therapists to engage in self-care activities.     

Imperative inference and practical rationality

Philosophical Studies - Some arguments include imperative clauses. For example: ‘Buy me a drink; you can’t buy me that drink unless you go to the bar; so, go to the bar!’ How...     

In Defense of the Epistemic Imperative

Sample (Philos Sci 82(5):856–866, 2015) argues that scientists ought not to believe that their theories are true because they cannot fulfill the epistemic obligation to take the diachronic perspective on their theories. I reply that Sample’s argument imposes an inordinately heavy epistemic obligation on scientists, and that it spells doom not only for scientific theories but also for observational beliefs and philosophical ideas that Samples endorses. I also delineate what I take to be a reasonable epistemic obligation for scientists. In sum, philosophers ought to impose on scientists only an epistemic standard that they are willing to impose on themselves.     

Frame Reflection Lab: a Playful Method for Frame Reflection on Synthetic Biology

Synthetic biology is an emerging technology that asks for inclusive reflection on how people frame the field. To unravel how we can facilitate such reflection, this study evaluates the Frame Reflection Lab (FRL). Building upon playfulness design principles, the FRL comprises a workshop with video-narratives and co-creative group exercises. We studied how the FRL facilitated frame reflection by organizing workshops with various student groups. Analysis of 12 group conversations and 158 mini-exit surveys yielded patterns in first-order reflection (problem analysis and solution finding in reflection on the development of synthetic biology as a field) as well as patterns in second-order reflection (reflection on values and assumptions underlying the first-order reflection). Also patterns in participants’ (re)framing of synthetic biology could be induced; participants’ viewpoints converged to some extent, yet with openness to individual viewpoint differences. Although the FRL method fortified the reflection processes of participants, the narratives and the workshop’s flexible format could inhibit the reflection too. Therefore, we advise designers of future frame reflection methods to apply stronger conversational facilitation and narratives of slightly mysterious yet identifiable narrators, in case e.g. video-narratives are created and used to scaffold the reflection process. Nevertheless, we argue that the use of a playful frame reflection method like the FRL could function well as (1) a step to precede more application-specific deliberation or decision-making on synthetic biology and as (2) a method for the collection of contemporary citizen viewpoints plus rationales underlying these, for the further (societally) responsible development of the emerging field.